Pinchas 5770-2010
"The Colorful Biography of Pinchas" by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald At the end of last week's parasha, we learned that a prominent couple performed a lewd act in public in order to directly…
Mishpatim 5775-2015
“Injuring a Fellow Human Being” by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald Among the 63 mitzvot that are found in this week’s parasha, parashat Mishpatim, are the fundamental laws regarding personal…
A Trap of Wealth
If I were a rich man...The most important men in town will come to fawn on me...When you're rich they think you really know... The now classic words from the Broadway show "Fiddler on the…
Rabbi Meir
The Mishna is a collection of citations of the oral law by an array of brilliant scholars. There are, however, many Mishnaic statements that are anonymous. According to…
Legal to Take?
With all the discussion during the last few years, about the legalization of marijuana, one might have wondered what is the traditional Jewish perspective regarding its use. It is, not…
Development of the Haggadah
On Passover night we are commanded "v'hee'ga'd'ta l'vincha" and you shall tell, the story of the Exodus to your children. (Notice the shared root of hee'ga'd'ta and Haggadah.) The…
Serach’s Serenade
When perusing the list of the generations of Jacob found in Genesis 46, one gets a strange sense that there was a powerful genetic predisposition in Jacob's family for male children.…
Take A Sabbatical
It is interesting that the two most common professions which offer sabbatical leaves are academia and clergy. These two professions are fields in which practitioners devote a great deal…
Who Was Hagar?
Stating simply that Hagar was the second wife of Abraham and the mother of Ishmael simplifies an incredibly complex character whose emotions and motivations are fleshed out in the Oral…
The Five Prohibitions of Yom Kippur
"...on the tenth of the month, you shall afflict your souls and do no work at all...for on that day God will forgive you and cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before…